BREAKING NEWS: Tyler Diep Drops Out of Assembly Race

According to the newspaper Người Việt, Tyler Diep has dropped out of the 72nd Assembly District race and will be running for re-election to the Westminster City Council. This comes on the heels of Los Alamitos Councilman Troy Edgar jumping into the race after switching from the 47th Congressional District earlier today. He stated that there was no pressure put on him by any other candidate or political entity to drop out of the race. You can expect to see him endorsing Troy Edgar in the very near future I would guess.

This is a bit surprising though because Diep was leading in the fundraising battle for this race with over $120,000 cash on hand in his account. You can read the story in Người Việt by clicking on the link here. Might I suggest this Google Translate link. The translation is not perfect but it will give you a rough idea of what exactly happened.

The big winner in this would appear to be Huntington Beach Councilman Matt Harper, but I am going to go out on a limb and say that OC Board of Education Member Long Pham actually benefits more from this turn of events. With Diep dropping out, Pham is now the only Vietnamese Republican remaining in the race with a possibility of Harper and Edgar splitting the vote. At the end of the day, though, I would now handicap this race as advantage Harper, assuming he does step up his fundraising.

[…] a statement published in the Vietnamese language publication Người Việt.According to the new OC Political blog:This comes on the heels of Los Alamitos Councilman Troy Edgar jumping into the race […]